Getting Laughs for a Song at the New York Funny Songs Festival

Jessica Delfino hopes to help her fellow musical comedians, like quartet Summer and Eve, cash in on their comedic and musical chops with her second annual New York Funny Songs Festival, taking place from May 30 to June 2.

When comedian Rob Paravonian hit the stage at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in the East Village on a recent Friday night, his first joke poked fun at his off-beat career choice.

ENLARGE

Jessica Delfino, the founder of the New York Funny Songs Festival.
Andrew Kelly for The Wall Street Journal

"My name is Rob," he said, strumming his guitar. "I'm a comedian and a musician. Which means I'm poor, twice."

Mr. Paravonian then launched into an 11-minute set of songs on topics ranging from decoupage and dial-up Internet to his technology-challenged parents and his love of the much-maligned G train.

There's a long, storied history of comedians expressing themselves through song, but aside from "Weird Al" Yankovic's heyday in the 1980s, it's not necessarily a profitable line of work. Musical comedian Jessica Delfino hopes to change that with her second annual New York Funny Songs Festival, taking place May 30 to June 2.

"We're twice as much of a comedian or a musician because we're two-in-one," said Ms. Delfino. "What's keeping it sort of this underground, hidden, but beloved, medium?"

Ms. Delfino's festival will feature 50 comedy musicians and 18 shows, classes, panels and parties. But even raising the $8,000 needed to pay for the event was tricky—Ms. Delfino turned to crowd fundraising site Kickstarter. She's hoping the festival will help promoters and club owners discover the next banjo-strumming
Steve Martin
or guitar-playing Adam Sandler.

"I feel like New York is all about niches," she said. "The more specialized you are [with] your thing, that's the way to make it in this city, especially financially."

Musical comedians have experienced waves of success over the past century, as new technologies have spread their reach. Radio provided national exposure to the likes of Spike Jones and His City Slickers in the 1940s and Stan Freberg and Tom Lehrer in the 1950s and 1960s. Television introduced people to the wacky songs and videos of Mr. Yankovic, who won mainstream approval and sold millions of records with parodies of songs such as "Beat It" by Michael Jackson.

While television and film has more recently given exposure to groups such as Flight of the Conchords and Tenacious D, the genre may have truly been revived by streaming video and social media, with groups such as Lonely Island and Key of Awesome grabbing spots on YouTube's list of the most-watched videos of 2011 and 2010.

This year, rapper Ben Haggerty, known as Macklemore, and DJ Ryan Lewis reached the top of the U.S. Billboard 100 chart with "Thrift Shop," a catchy, tongue-in-cheek take on bargain shopping (viewed on YouTube more than 315 million times).

"These are modern minstrels," says musical theater historian John Kenrick, pointing to a history of performers who earned their keep by singing funny songs for the entertainment of noblemen during the medieval and renaissance periods.

By virtue of their position as entertainers in wealthy courts, the musicians got away with making some controversial points -- a tradition that continues today, he said. "There are songs going back to the medieval period that are absolutely pornographic in their spoof in everything from sexual mores to power of the elite," he says. "The ability of comedians to fuse comedy and specifically musical forms of comedy to put across a point – that existed all the way back when."

Indeed, Ms. Delfino's songs are expositions on a range of topics that would make a conservative audience blush—from her issues with the Catholic Church to her concern that having a baby would wreck her body.

"I think that being shocked is great because it makes you think of things that you wouldn't have thought of before, it makes you think of things a little bit differently," says Ms. Delfino. "Which is very exciting – that's one of the great things about art."

Nevertheless, the genre has been snubbed by others in the entertainment industry, and unfairly so, says Mr. Kenrick. "It's a superb form of the art."

"I have a suspicion that those who look down on people who add music to any form of entertainment and diversion, only look down on it when they are not capable of making that addition themselves," he said.

So why isn't musical comedy a money maker? Devotees say comedy clubs sometimes shy away from the setup required by musical acts, and musical comedy faces a stigma of being a novelty genre against the more established stand-up scene.

At a recent rehearsal in Woodside, Queens, the band Summer and Eve, who hosted the UCB show that Mr. Paravonian performed in, picked through a list of songs with topics ranging from the benefits of smoking to retired boxer and grill maker George Foreman.

Band members Emily Tarver, Rebecca Kaasa, and Nadia and Aaron Quinn compose their own music and play guitar, ukulele, triangle, recorder and more in their act.

The band traded theories over why the genre of comedy music has not enjoyed as much mainstream success as standup comedy.

"People are still trying to wrap their heads around, 'Where do I place you? What is your act?'" says Ms. Tarver. "It has been around for a long time and still, people are like, 'Wait—you do what? You write funny songs? Why?'"

Ms. Kaasa blamed the "active listening" required for people to pick up on jokes in the music, something the band has struggled with while performing in bars or music clubs.

Regardless of the reason, the genre is a natural fit for the four to express their love of comedy and musicianship and to help bolster their careers as performers.

"We're musicians who want to write things that are funny," Ms. Tarver says, "Instead of, like, real music," she laughs. "Because that's vulnerable. I don't want people to know what I think about love."

Jay Levey, Mr. Yankovic's manager for 30 years, agrees that funny music is still considered a novelty despite its crossover success. He's hoping the internet will change that.

"I think it has yet to completely escape from that perception, which I think is an ongoing problem," says Mr. Levey. But, "with the onset of the Internet and especially of YouTube in last few years, it has become considerably less of a novelty and more of accepted artistic form."

As for Ms. Delfino, she continues to trumpet the cause of musical comedy, pleading in an ad for the festival to "stop the segregation of comedy and music."

Waiting to go onstage at an event in the Theater District hosted by the glitter-festooned duo the Parodivas, Ms. Delfino felt that goal of greater profitability was within reach.

"I have fans, I sell CDs and MP3s," the recently married Ms. Delfino said. "But I need to broaden my fan base to, like, really, really make it—like baby-making money," she said with a laugh.

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